The invention relates to a method for programming a thermostat and, more particularly, to a method for programming a thermostat with heating and cooling schedules.
Programmable thermostats are well known in the art and typically have a keypad wherein heating and cooling schedules can be entered so as to provide for different thermostat temperature settings for various periods of the day. Programming the heating and cooling schedules of a programmable thermostat typically requires many button presses, mode changes, good vision and a good memory. Due to size requirements of the thermostat, the display is necessarily small making programming difficult. The difficulty of programming such a thermostat is compounded by the fact that programming directions, which are typically provided with product literature, are frequently not readily available to the user.
It is clear that the need remains for a method for programming a programmable thermostat which overcomes these difficulties.
It is therefore the primary object of the present invention to provide an improved method for programming a programmable thermostat.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a method wherein programming is enhanced within the resource constraints of existing programmable thermostats.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will be presented herein below.
In accordance with the present invention, the foregoing objects and advantages have been readily attained.
According to the invention, a method is provided for programming a thermostat, which method comprises the steps of providing a thermostat programmed to convert programming codes into time-temperature schedules; determining a desired time-temperature schedule; developing a programming code corresponding to said desired time-temperature schedule; and entering said programming code into said thermostat, whereby said programming code is translated into said desired time-temperature schedule.
The desired schedule and code can advantageously be selected and obtained by a user interfacing with a suitable programming device. The interface could be by computer network, telephone or personal computer, for example. This allows the user to select scheduling options directly from a user friendly graphical user interface.
A further advantage of the invention results from recursively generating a decoding dictionary at the thermostat whereby memory requirements at the thermostat are reduced.